5 Ways to use Twitter for Customer Feedback

If you've struggled to sell Twitter as a way to increase conversions and sales, you're not alone. And in fact, this isn't Twitter's strongest suit: instead, Twitter offers businesses the subtle ability to engage your customers and really draw out their opinions of you, your brand and your products or services so you can become more nimble and meet their needs. Here are 5 ways to use Twitter for customer feedback. With Twitter, you have unprecedented access to what your customers think of you and your business. Imagine Donald Draper's near heart attack if he could suddenly and instantly tap into direct feedback from consumers - it's a marketer's dream. So rather than focusing on direct conversions, you might want to use Twitter to increase your knowledge of your consumer base. There are plenty of other things that Twitter is great for as well, like branding and networking, but using it for feedback is a great place to start. 1. Ask questions Start by asking questions of your followers. Ask anything you're curious about: "Do you like our new logo?", "How often do you buy Product X?", or "Would you ever switch from your preferred brand?". By asking questions, you'll get an instant snapshot of what your customers think about a certain topic, and as an added bonus you will add some spice to your Twitter account (nobody wants to follow an account that only tweets out press releases). Although this isn't exactly scientific, you can ask the same question several times throughout the week to reach a wider audience and hear from even more of your followers. 2. Do a quick poll By polling your audience, you do two things: 1) you find out relevant opinions pertaining to your brand, products or services and 2) you pique the interest of your followers and improve engagement. Result #1 is obviously the main benefit of running a Twitter poll, but result #2 happens because people who participate in the poll will want to keep checking back to see where their answer fell compared to others - so to achieve this benefit, you've got to not only poll your followers, but you must post the results of the poll when it's complete. You can ask anything you want, but it's a good idea to indicate that you are polling your followers, and when you'll post the results. A tweet like this might do: "Poll: where do you buy your Product X? Closes in 1 hr". That way people who participate will know to check back in about an hour to see the results. Once you've received a fair number of responses, you could tweet out something like, "Results: 65% grocery story, 25% convenience store, 10% online". 3. Create a customer support account If you find you're receiving a number of questions, complaints or comments from customers on Twitter, setting up a dedicated customer support account is a great way to manage your customer feedback. Simply direct all customer inquiries to this account, and you've got an instant stream of feedback awaiting your analysis. Of course, you have to actually offer support to those who tweet to your support account: direct them to your FAQ, troubleshoot their technical issues, and move the conversation to email or a help desk if need be. But a dedicated customer service account is also a great way to amass customer feedback and adjust your marketing strategy based on what your Twitter followers are saying. 4. Monitor your @mentions Not all feedback has to be initiated by you or your brand. If you're already on Twitter, chances are your customers are too - and they're talking about you. Do a quick search for your @mentions (by logging in to Twitter.com and clicking the @mention tab beside your timeline tab) and I bet you'll find some feedback you've been missing out on. If you use a dashboard like HootSuite or TweetDeck, you will want to set up a column that monitors only your @mentions. This way you can see, at a glance, what people are saying about your brand on Twitter, and respond if need be. 5. Monitor search results for your product, brand, slogan, etc. While keeping an eye on your @mentions is important, people might not always use your Twitter handle to refer to your business. They might talk about a product you've created, your CEO's name, or your website domain. So if you really want to capture all of the feedback happening in real time on Twitter, you've got to get a little more creative. We've written an in-depth post on how to find all of your replies, mentions and more on Twitter. I highly suggest checking it out and implementing the steps outlined. This way, you will see all mentions of your brand on Twitter, and you'll be able to pretty much all of the feedback happening on the network.

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5 Ways to use Twitter for Customer Feedback

Lauren Dugan

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Lauren Dugan